“Seeing that bear’s track, and hearing the howl of those wolves,” said the Doctor, “reminds me of a story I heard told by an old Ohio pilot, whom I found in drifting down that noble river in a pirogue, some five and twenty years ago.  We tied up one night by the side of another similar craft, that had gone down ahead of us, the people on board of which had landed and built a camp-fire, and erected their tent.  They were strangers to us, but in those days everybody you met in the wilderness which skirted the Upper Ohio was your friend, if you chose to regard him so.  I was a mere boy then, and was in company with my father and three other gentlemen, who owned a township of land not far from Cincinnati; that is not far now, considering the difference in the mode of travelling between then and now, and we were on our way to explore that township.  I did not regard it as of much value then, though it has since brought a heap of money to its owners.  We found the company belonging to the other boat busily employed in cooking a supper of venison and bear-meat, they having in the course of the day killed two deer and a bear that they found swimming the river.  We were invited to help ourselves; an invitation which, being cordially given, we as cordially accepted.  We had been passing during most of the day through unbroken forests, standing up in stately majesty on both sides of the river, and stretching back the Lord knows how far.  After the darkness gathered, the wolves made the wilderness vocal with their howling.  It was the first time I had ever heard them, and for that matter the last, until since we have been in these woods:  but when that old fellow over the lake lifted up his voice last night, I recognized it at once.  I can’t say I admired it as a musical performance then, and I don’t appreciate its harmony now.  If there are those who like it, why, de gustibus non, and so forth.

“But I set out to tell the story that the old Ohio pilot told that night, while the travellers sat smoking around their camp-fires, and the wolves were howling in the wilderness about us.  I do not, of course, vouch for its truth; I simply tell it as he told it to us.  He seemed to believe it himself, for he told it with a gravity of face, and a seriousness of manner, which would ill comport with its falsity.  His hearers did not seem to regard it as passing belief, but they laughed at the idea of drowning a bear.

“‘Twenty odd years ago,’ said the old pilot, as he lighted his pipe and seated himself on the head of a whisky-keg, ’there warn’t a great many people along the Ohio, except Ingins and bears, and we didn’t like to cultivate a very close acquaintance with either of them, for the Ingins were cheatin’, deceivin’, and scalpin’ critters, and the bears had an onpleasant way with ’em, that people of delicate narves didn’t like.  I came out for some people over on the east side of the mountains, lookin’ land, in company with four men who had hunted over the country.  Ohio warn’t any great shakes then, but let me tell you, stranger, it had a mighty big pile of the tallest kind of land layin’ around waitin’ to be opened up to the sunlight.  It’s goin’ ahead now, and people are rushin’ matters in the way of settlin’ of it, but you could stick down a stake most anywhere in it then, and travel in any direction a hundred miles climbin’ a fence.